welcome to my probably one of my last from this generation of products
Ultrabook unboxing this is for Acer's
Aspire S3 so you can see the exact part number we're looking at here we've also
got the specs here so it comes with Windows 7 Home Premium this guy's got a
core i5 2467m 13.3 in screen with LED
backlight HD graphics 4 gigs of memory 300 20 gig hard drive card reader HD
webcam 3 Cell lithium ion battery and Microsoft Office 2010 pre-loaded so
pretty much what you'd expect although I am really looking forward to having a
closer uh experience with this
particular Ultra Book than the pictures that I have seen
before now the ones that I've already looked at are the ASUS nbook and the
Apple MacBook Air the key differences between those two are obviously the
operating system whereas with the Aspire
S3 it has a distinct similarity with the
ASUS unit because it is also a
Windows-based Ultrabook now this one came from Acer this is a a demo eval
unit so you can see that the seal was already broken on it but let's see if we
can still have a fairly authentic unboxing experience and it looks like we
probably will okay okay so here we will find the power adapter which is pretty
much what you've come to expect a fairly large size power plug compared to the
Zenbook from ASUS a very reasonable sized actual brick all right in there we
find not a whole lot else let's take out the not notebook I think they're still
called notebooks yeah and then there's we've got some documentation as well as
your International Travelers warranty very very good to have and I think that
pretty much does it for ex accessories so it doesn't include quite the same uh
bells and whistles like the carrying case that comes with the Zenbook but
it's also I don't think quite as Bare Bones as the apple one because it at
least comes with the international warranty all right comes in a nice
little protective sleeve here and there
we are so the form factor is as you can
clearly see fairly similar to the other two units but my sort of my my feeling
on this one is that it feels a little bit thicker but not actually any heavier
it's still a very comfortable sort of
design so here let's have a look at the back so here we've got our rubber feet
plenty of attention to detail on the bottom of the unit so nice finish which
is something that Apple kind of started with their with their MacBooks and
paying attention to the bottom and not just putting plastic all over it so Acer
has definitely gone with that for their
S3 unit we can also see it's it's got a nice brushed finish on the top that
looks really good there's a couple fingerprints on it from whoever was using it before but what I'll do is
before I do my full video on my ncx channels I'll see if I can get them off
and that way I will know already before I talk to you guys about it sort of more
formally how easy it is to remove fingerprints from it cuz one of my
gripes about brush metal finishes is that they can be a bit of a bear to
remove fingerprints from in terms of the overall keyboard layout we can see that
it's fairly standard we you have a fulls sizee shift fulls sizee shift plenty
fulls siiz backspace and we've got a bit of a smaller eyes oh oh okay Slick's
hiding from the reflective screen so I'm just going to go like that so that he doesn't have to do that okay and then
we've got an enter where we've put our backslash above it I don't mind this
design because I very rarely hit this part of the enter key in fact I'd say
never and this is the part that I usually go for we've got our arrow keys
and they're proper formation although they're quite small but you shouldn't use them too much and I love seeing
dedicated page up and page down keys in a convenient location because think
about it actually look at how wide this one opens check that out check out that
hinge so that's the maximum H maximum
opening so this could be very easily used for reading you know page up page
down you got your buttons right here right and then you've got it open pretty
much like a like a newspaper or like a magazine and uh yeah that's that's
actually outstanding now I'm not going to be able to compare this to the other
two units very easy easily in terms of performance because this is a hard drive
based model so it's a lower pric model but I just wanted to look at it in terms
of the form factor so why don't I just grab the MacBook Air really quick here
and I'll be back in a sec hold on sorry guys and let's just compare them really
quick because they do have the same size
screen similar sort of battery
specifications similar CPU specs so
there there we have it so the first thing H there we
are let's have a look at the overall thickness here because it seems to me ah
yes okay the S3 is a little bit thicker
so there yeah my uh my gut feeling on
that one was not incorrect however what you guys will probably notice is that at
its thickest point the MacBook Air is pretty much the same um and then once it
tapers down that's where the difference really comes in so the Acer unit is more
of more of a consistent thickness
throughout rather than being really really thin at one end and not that thin
at the other so let's see what that translates to in terms of IO so we've
got our headphone Port here we've got that that looks like for a carrying
strap although I really I really can't imagine carrying around a laptop on a
wrist strap like that but is that not what that looks like to you guys okay so
yeah I'll have to see if Acer has any comments on that not much on the front
as we pretty much expect and then on the other side we've got our SD card reader
and then on the back is where we're going to find the majority of the io so
we have our power input our HDMI as well as our usb2 ports and finally our
exhaust for the internal fan so that's
where Acer has really differed from what their competitors are doing in that
they've instead of gone going with a hinge design like this where the entire
back of the notebook is taken up by the hinge they've gone with a hinge design
that feels very robust but still allows
all of these IO options to be built into the
back uh let me have a look here at what else there is to say you know what let's
compare them in terms of the size here
so yes they're both 13.3 in notebooks
but the Acer oh check this out the Acer probably due to that hinge design is
actually a little bit what would you call that not wider but
shorter narrower sure let's call it narrower so it's not quite as large as
the MacBook Air this way even though it is a bit thicker so that's probably why
they weigh very similar even though the MacBook Air is
uh is significantly thinner let me see so the touchpad is
smaller but I do see one major advantage
on the touchpad versus the ASUS unit and that is that it can be used at the very
bottom on the clicky spaces so you can oh Pull It Forward a bit push it down a
bit Ah okay oh that one too okay here we go so you can use the bottom part of the
touchpad in order to navigate and then you can also click on it the ASUS unit
actually cuts off about here and is not sensitive on the parts that are
clickable so I would definitely give Acer a big thumbs up for uh for that
particular design Choice other than that I don't see too much here to
mention um so yeah I'll wait till I do my
NC video about it but yeah thanks for checking out my unboxing of the Acer S3
Ultra Book so far this one's actually looking really really sharp keyboard
feels good form factor feels good the weight
feels good build quality feels very good this is a metal top so that's not like a
brushed plastic or anything like that don't forget to subscribe to L Tech
tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos okay sck told me
what he wanted me to do when he was sort of gesturing at me and he wanted me to
show the hinge comparison between the MacBook Air which goes to here and the
S3 which goes to here that seems totally
insignificant at first but it comes down to how you're going to use it these
things are so light that you can carry them around with one hand and like I was
sort of saying before like you can actually operate the computer semic
comfortably like this so you grab it like this you go okay yeah yeah page
down page down I'm reading oh I'm going to fold it up I'm going carry it around
I'm going to throw it you know down the sleeve of my backpack or whatever the
case may be and hey check this out resume times even though it's using a
hard drive
Kow already open can you tell I watched
Cars 2 last night okay I'm done actually